LZR-1143: Evolution (4 page)

She was right. Kopland couldn’t have been to blame. It didn’t fit.

“Think, Mike. What if she found out about Kopland? What if she knew about his organization and their plans, but had no idea who she could trust. If she knew about the vaccine, and was trying to work against him, maybe afraid she would be killed or exposed to the virus ...”

Understanding, I groaned, and completed her sentence.

“… then she would have injected herself with the
vaccine
, not the virus. That’s why she had it with her at home, and why she injected me with it.”

She nodded, locking eyes with me over the back of the chair.

But if that was true, we should have turned long ago. Something was missing.

“So how do we explain the fact that we’re up and walking, perfectly immune and happy as clams?”

She cocked her head slightly, flexing her legs and standing up over the chair.

“I’ve got a theory,” she said, turning and walking to the other side of the room.

“I think that the radioactivity has something to do with it. The files on that drive seem to make a lot of the fact that the radioactivity plays some small, indefinable part in the cell regeneration that’s at the heart of this virus. I think that close and intense exposure to the infected may trigger the vaccine’s curative and immunizing functions. That’s why you and I both ended up fine. It would also explain the nausea and the headaches that people experience when they’re in contact with the elemental base chemical.”

Well that didn’t make sense.

Maria worked with these things, didn’t she? If that was true, and she injected herself with the vaccine, she should never have turned.

I asked as much.

“Not exactly,” she answered, clearly having considered it. “You saw the precautions they took. Hazmat suits, gas masks. Even that picture of Maria on the video, she was separated from the creature by twelve feet and a bulletproof glass encasement behind the metal bars. They didn’t take any chances with this shit. And, ironically, that could have been their mistake.”

I sighed, understanding.

“So we have a vaccine that works, but only if you snuggle up to a zombie and expose yourself to whatever ambient energy they exude. Otherwise, the vaccine is as bad as the disease. In the mean time, we have a world tearing apart at the seams, hungry for anything that could help.”

“And thus springs our problem.” She opened her desk drawer, removing a small blue vial from a wadded up pair of underwear. “What the flying frack do we do with this now?”

I knew exactly what I was going to do with it, but I didn’t think Kate would like it.

I smiled big, trying to cushion the impact.

“Well, I’ve got a delivery to make.”

She looked at me, a question in her eyes. “Don’t you think that’s a risk? Has he been exposed to enough infected? He’s a pilot, after all. He was never on the ground, close in with those things like us.”

Maybe not, but he was close several times.

“What about the roof? And when they landed for repairs? On the roof, they were only ten feet away when you took off, and you can’t tell me that if they landed in a town of some sort, they didn’t have a few of them moaning at the walls as they made repairs. I’m certain enough to give it a shot. We can’t let him die in that room. Not after he saved our asses. Twice.”

She looked up briefly, as if thinking about the proposition. Finally, her face relaxed and she nodded, a small smile crossing her face.

“Okay, we can give it a shot. But once he’s injected, we make sure to monitor him.”

I just smiled once and nodded.

Chapter 4

We knocked together a simple plan while we waited for Corporal No Smile to escort us to the bridge. The plan was simple, but the risks inherent in being caught were enormous. Nevertheless, when I described my plan, Kate was all in. I don’t know if I had come to expect anything different, honestly.

When our escort arrived, he was accompanied by the silent Commander Vincent. He grunted his way to the bridge in response to pointed questions from Kate and I. We eventually lost interest and silently decided to wait until we got to the bridge. It was a fair hike through the bowels of the ship. Seemingly endless hallways and low ceilings; narrow stairwells and tight hatches. It was a ship that had seen nearly half a century of war, and her age showed. But she was spotless and running smoothly—the mark of military efficiency. I was impressed, and I felt really lucky to be on board.

We emerged onto the flight deck level and passed an open hatch facing the deck. Crewmen in tan jumpsuits and orange vests walked and ran to various points on the gray tarmac. The smell of tar and oil filtered in through the open door. In the distance, a speck on the horizon explained the flurry of activity. An airplane was approaching.

We tried to watch, but Commander Vincent didn’t stop, and we were ushered up four more levels to the main bridge in short order. As we climbed, I noticed briefly how warm the stairwell felt, dragging a hand across my face and wiping a slight sheen of sweat from my brow. It definitely felt a little warmer here.

The bridge was sealed off from the stairwell by a thick steel hatchway, which our Marine escort kindly opened for us as we walked over the small lip adjoining the floor into a large room with multiple windows and crew.

It hummed with low conversation and electronics.

On a scale from one to uber-Texan, Captain Allred defied measurement. Yep, I didn’t intend that to make sense. He was
that
off-the-charts.

“Well holy shit boy, it’s good to meet you,” he boomed, welcoming us to the bridge from across the room. He rose from a large chair and strode to meet us. Long strides from his huge frame made it a short trip. He was a huge man, at least six and a half feet tall. His large paunch jutted over a massive pewter belt buckle with a depiction of the Enterprise stamped on the front. Cowboy boots peeked out from beneath his khaki pants.

I smiled. That could
not
be in compliance with uniform regulations.

Behind me, Kate chuckled softly under her breath as he grabbed my hand in one of his huge paws and pumped it furiously.

“Welcome to the Enterprise, you lucky somma bitch,” he said loudly, smiling as he released my wounded appendage and turned to Kate.

“Ma’am, it’s a pleasure to make your acquaintance,” he said to Kate, accosting her hand in the same fashion. Her smile quickly went from amused to strained. I could almost hear her small bones crackling under his grip.

I did the gentlemanly thing and interrupted him mid-shake.

“Captain, we can’t tell you how much we appreciate everything you’ve done. We would have died out there without your help. You and your men have our gratitude.” I didn’t want to get too much into details, so I kept it simple.

He backed up a step and waived his huge arm through the air quickly, waving dismissively.

“Hell son, that ain’t a goddamned thing. What we’re paid to do, in’t it? Shit. Wish we could help more folk like you. Nothin’ doin’ lately. Not a damned living thing to be saved, seems like.”

He grimaced, walking over to a large table in the middle of the bridge. It was the size of two pool tables laid side by side, and was entirely glass. It had an electronic map of the east coast projected on it, with multiple lights and colors signifying what I assumed to be cities and towns.

“You two had a hell of a time of it, didn’t you? Doc tells me you escaped the Liverpool with barely a damn chicken scratch. Just a couple of bumps on the egg cradle, ain’t that right?”

I opened my mouth to speak, but Kate surreptitiously stepped on my foot. It didn’t matter. Captain Allred wasn’t stopping.

“Damn shame about the Liverpool,” he said, shaking his head. “Captain was a good man. Met him in an exercise few years back. Other than that damn arrogant accent of his, I liked the guy.”

He looked up. “You two got anything interesting to tell me? We are damn short on first person intel these days, and I could use anything you got. Feel like I know less about what’s goin’ on out there on the ground level than a deaf mute whore on Sunday.”

Kate spoke quickly. “I’m sorry sir, we were hoping you could tell us.”

He grunted—a grunt that was half chuckle and half resigned. Captain Allred turned to the map suddenly, speaking over his shoulder as if he expected us to look at the map with him as he spoke, which we did.

“I’ll tell you what we know, which ain’t enough to feed a hog for a week” he said, pointing at the map. “Ain’t nothing about this shit that’s top secret. Anything we’re doing you can see with your own eyes. What you see here is the best idea we got on how far the shit has spread from the fan. We’ve got sporadic com links, fuzzy sat pictures, and almost zero chatter on civilian bands. Last time we heard from Atlantic Command was three days ago, and we have no idea on the disposition of at least three quarters of the civilian command structure. We are still in contact with command and control in the Pentagon, but other than that, our coms are real sketchy.”

He pointed at five pulsing red dots spread out over the maps of several states, blinking slowly on the semi-transparent glass. His finger jabbed a different point each time he named a city. I stared at the massive board, looking to make sense of the lights. For an instant, my eyes wouldn’t focus. I grabbed the edge of the table to steady myself suddenly.

“New York, Boston, Philly, Pittsburgh, Atlantic City.” He intoned them slowly, almost reverently. “All gone. Or near as. Should be festering flaming sores on the earth by now. Firebombed to hell. Thousands of pounds of ordnance from us, from the Limeys and from some helpful cruise missiles launched by some chicken-shit Frenchies 600 miles away. Those fois-gras munching snail-eaters didn’t want to get too close—at least not close enough for search and rescue work.”

He snorted in derision.

Turning toward us, he seemed to need to explain. “Orders came down about six days ago. Take out the major population centers. Keep the infected numbers down, maybe control the infection rates and keep folk from trying to get to the larger cities. Didn’t sit too well with a number of us, let me tell you. Damn sure didn’t like passing that order to my people. But we followed through. Just finished up with Atlantic City, in fact.”

“I noticed,” I said, almost under my breath.

Kate looked stunned, despite having witnessed New York’s demise from the helicopter when the Liverpool launched several days ago.

“But surely there was … I mean, they can’t be doing this up and down the coast, can they? The living people … the infrastructure … it will take years to recover what we’re destroying.”

I knew what she was thinking. We might have a cure. Don’t be too hasty to destroy what we might be able to save. Except we didn’t know yet whether we had the answer. Only a smaller question.

Before he could answer, I broke in.

“Have you heard back from the other ships? I mean, there are more right? You can’t be the only one out here.”

It was a logical assumption. Naval vessels would have been largely insulated from the infection. Self-sustaining, they produced their own water and power. They held ample supplies of food and ammunition, and they could stay under way for weeks on end.

“Hell no, son. Big E ain’t the only ship in the water, she’s just the oldest. We got carrier groups from here to Cuba and from Seattle to San Diego doing cleaning and search and rescue ops. So far, so good. No casualties yet. The zombie bastards don’t really shoot back at the cruise missiles and laser guided bombs, and we don’t let anyone on board who even sniffles funny.”

He looked up at Kate, eyes narrowing slightly.

“I know what you’re thinking ma’am, and while I’m angrier than a pregnant badger in a sack, I ain’t got one lick of discretion. Aside from that, these things ain’t goin’ away. We have got to do something to thin their numbers.”

He leaned back against the table and crossed his arms, a large frown bringing the corners of his eyes down. Outside, the roar of an engine broke through the silence as he paused, and he turned to watch the tail of an F-18 disappear from view. Steam drifted up from the catapult below, and he turned back to us.

“I know you folk have been out of the loop, but let me give you the some new pieces of intel we have on these bastards. Last few people we rescued reported that they came from a small town. It was large enough to have one good, strong shelter, housing about a hundred pitiful survivors in a high school gym. They barred the doors and hunkered down. Just like thousands of folks are doing this very second.”

“Well, this town, it didn’t have so many people. Maybe a few thousand total, and they were spread out over twenty or thirty miles. Decent farming community, but nothing like New York or Boston. Hell, not even bigger than a large neighborhood in one a those places.”

He frowned then, voice going slightly lower, softer. Behind us, Vincent shifted his weight, exhaling loudly. He had clearly heard the story.

“The folk we rescued were holed up in a small convenience store. Nothing secure, but they were sneaky. They kept the lights off, the sound down, and their profiles low. See, these things seem to hunt by sound and smell. Sight’s for shit. Can’t see too well at all, unless the target’s movin’ or they’re pretty close. According to our friends, they also have trouble with glass and reflections—almost as if they see in grays and blacks.”

I remembered the car dealership, where the creature had trouble focusing on me behind the opened car door. The analysis made sense. We knew they used noise and smell, but it was good to know they lacked acute vision, as Kopland had explained in the lab.

“Anyhow, these people sat there for days. Watching these dead folk wander about outside, hoping against hope that none of ‘em would sniff ‘em out and break the glass windows in front of the store. Never had a break to run for it. Didn’t have guns or a car. Just stuck there.”

He paused as a landing aircraft shrieked in the background, tires slamming against pavement at more than a hundred miles an hour. The engines whined loudly and then rapidly spooled down. He continued, unfazed.